SFB Campaign - Sept 2009

[cheethorne]

There will be a new SFB campaign starting in Sept 2009.

Campaign Website:
homepage.mac.com/cheethorne/sfb/

Link to version 9 rules:
homepage.mac.com/cheethorne/sfb/rulesv9.html

The rules are very similar to the version 8 rules, but as usual there has been some upgrades and additions. The most important of these are listed here:

Set-Up Changes:
* Players start with more resources: three provinces, more planets, larger fleets, more survey ships.
* Separated starting accessories, like drones and boarding parties, from defensive purchases, like ground bases and defense satellites.

Economic Changes:
* Players can train a legendary mentor which increases experience and allows a ship to sometimes function as if it was already experienced.
* Players can create trade routes between their planets to generate more CPV.
* Players are no longer penalized when putting CPV into the Reserve, but the reserve slowly loses money over time, so it is not a long-term storage for money.
* Production schedule is now based on four turn years and separated police ship production from defense production (now called Auxiliary production).
* Survey ships can receive a mech-link refit to carry a Survey PF, which makes it easier to find Economic Resources.
* Players get 25% of the CPV value of ships they destroy in a battle if they ultimately "win" the battle.

Galactic Information Changes:
* Players can now build Large Asteroids to function as moons for holding ground bases.
* Players can now build Strategic Minefields to delay enemy invasions of their territory.
* When a player's base or planet is attacked, there is a chance that the player will have to defend a number of civilian freighters.
* Players can conduct raids against trade routes and economic resources controlled by other players.
* Changed tech progression to reflect four turn years.
* Increased the range of most supply points.
* Increased the number of survey ships each player can support.
* Grouped all defensive systems into this section.

Campaign Movement Changes:
* Ships can now use Cloaked Movement unplotted.

Exploration Changes:
* Removed Small Asteroid Fields from the economic resource chart.
* You must now make space terrain rolls with civilian exploration team hexes.
* Players can discover and integrate colonies in territory they have already explored.

Combat Changes:
* Players can no longer overhaul damaged ships, but can use continuous damage repair to slowly restore their ships over several turns (or use long-term repairs to repair a ship in one turn).
* Expended T-Bombs and drones and killed crew units are now freely replaced while a ship is Provisioned (within a supply chain that includes a planet).

Ground Combat Changes:
* Simplified combat by removing some units, including Trans-Howitzers, transporter artillery, and space fighters.
* Planets no longer have to be occupied

Victory Point Changes:
* Killing any legendary officer is worth CPV and increased the amount gained by killing a legendary captain and legendary admiral.

[john]

cool

[cheethorne]

Updated the campaign rules v9 available at:
homepage.mac.com/cheethorne/sfb/

Most of the changes here are relatively small. The biggest ones being that auxiliary ships can now use reserve movement (instead of just police ships and local defense ships), the rules now cover the Ryn, which required a few special rules to be added to the game, and the change of the Gravity Waves terrain type to the Qixavalor Cloud from Omega 4.

The Qixavalor Cloud is incredibly explosive and generates feedback damage on a ship when it fires and when it moves, but the target of an attack also takes more damage than normal. Should be more interesting to play in than the static gravity waves.

The changes are described here:
* Updated 1.3 - Changed list of available races to mention external rule documents.
* Updated 3.5.4 - Increased economic damage caused by razing to reflect higher CPV production of planets.
* Updated 3.7 - Added notes on how the Ryn can build their Transporter Network.
* Updated 3.9 - Raiding groups take longer to return after a raid and they can perform two impulses of razing against a planetary target after a successful raid.
* Updated 4.5 - Auxiliary ships can use Reserve Movement and Klingon ISF ships are limited to moving two hexes using Reserve Movement.
* Updated 5.0 Chart 1.1 - Replaced Gravity Waves with Qixavalor Cloud and discovered nebula have a chance to be a Ryn nebula.
* Added 5.0 Chart 2.3.1 - Wyn receive less penalties for using exploration freighters because they don't have a dedicated survey ship.
* Updated 5.4 - Colonies can now only be found in empty, open space hexes.
* Updated 6.4 - Added notes to determine who wins a battle and added rules for fighting adjacent to a Ryn nebula.
* Updated Appendix D - Added Orion notes from race selection section, added Ryn ship notes, cleaned up the Seltorian notes, and removed special Wyn survey ship.

The only area that still needs more work is 2.4 - Accessory Production. I plan to rewrite most of that section to make it easier for new players to understand. There won't be any substansive rule changes here, just a re-organization and a good listing of available options.

I also plan to write up specific rules for the Souldra so that they can be played with some of their special racial features. I don't plan to write up any more special rules for races until I get the Omega 1 module, which probably won't be till after the campaign starts. I don't expect most of them to be very hard anyway, at least not most of them.

[ikefist]

Are you going to impement the mine border rules for this campain and if you do are the ryn going to be affected by it since they don't set off mines

[cheethorne]

The Ryn use regular warp drives for strategic movement and are equally affected by strategic minefields.

Oh yeah, and yes, the strategic minefield rules are in use for campaign v9 (this campaign).

[ikefist]

do the ryn have tugs and pods? and if not how will they build bases?

[ikefist]

I also think your repair rules are a bit harsh have u done the math out on that its going to cost far far more to fix a ship than build a new one your lets say federation dreadnaught has 45 warp times that by 10 thats 450 divided by 2 is 225 that alone is almost the cost of the ship the repair cost is to high

[ikefist]

What are the ryn going to use to protect there trade routes since they have no local defence or police ships

[ikefist]

Can the RYn use there T missles for bombbardment?

[cheethorne]

Aug 16, 2009 23:22:43 GMT -4 ikefist said:

do the ryn have tugs and pods? and if not how will they build bases?

In the latest version of the rules, in Appendix D, under the Ryn section, it has a section on Tug functions. It states:

Tug Functions:
* Each Heavy Cruiser or larger ship can perform all tasks that a tug can perform, but do not count against a player's tug limit. For example, a Dreadnought can assist a survey ship in finding Colony Sites.
* A player cannot have more ships performing tug tasks than he can support tugs (ie. one per small, major, and primary planet).

This gives the Ryn a bit of an advantage over many races with dedicated Tugs, but it also means your cheapest tug is 161 CPV, which is quite a bit more expensive than most people's cheapest Tug.

Aug 16, 2009 23:38:22 GMT -4 ikefist said:

I also think your repair rules are a bit harsh have u done the math out on that its going to cost far far more to fix a ship than build a new one

I know this and I am fine with the end result. It is both realistic and provides interesting decisions. For example, if you own a car for a few years, then get it into a really bad accident, repairing the car might cost more than it is currently worth. Also, with the new Continuous Damage Repair rules, you can considerably lower the cost of repairing a ship by performing a few turns of continuous damage repair on the most expensive systems to repair (like warp and some weapons). In your example, by waiting two turns and repairing Warp boxes with CDR, you could lower the repair cost by 60 CPV (6 warp per turn * 2 turns * 10 repair points = 120 * 0.5 CPV = 60 CPV).

Aug 17, 2009 0:57:34 GMT -4 ikefist said:

Can the RYn use there T missles for bombbardment?

No, only Type-IIIXX drones fired by Drone Bombardment ships can be used for bombardment missions. If, in the future, bombardment type missiles are developed for the Ryn, this will obviously change, but until then, they can't.

Aug 16, 2009 23:43:00 GMT -4 ikefist said:

What are the ryn going to use to protect there trade routes since they have no local defence or police ships

Oops, forgot about this.

They will use Prime Corvettes in place of police ships and small and large auxiliary cruisers in place of local defense ships. I will make a note of this. The protection of their trade routes will be better than what some players can use (see the Tholian police cutter compared to the Federation police corvette), but not as good as some players.

[cheethorne]

THE CHANGES LISTED HERE HAVE BEEN POSTED:

Sometimes I make small changes to the rules without letting people know until the change is posted online (and then I make a post here), so what I am going to do instead is use this post to provide a continually growing list of changes that I am making to the rules from the time of the last online update to the next online update.

Until I say otherwise, none of these changes are available online at this time:

Rules v9:
* Updated 2.5.1 - Players can give ships non-functional refits before the technology is available and Partial X-Tech refits can now be used.
* Updated 2.9 - Increased cost of carrier and PF tender trade route defense upgrades and added notes about general replacements for races that do not have police ships and/or local defense ships.
* Updated 4.3 - Free Traders (and variants) now gain four operational movement points per turn, like Armed Priority Transports. This allows Prime Corvettes to serve as direct police ship replacements.
* Updated 4.5 - Re-oranized Reserve Movement section. Armed Cutters, Prime Corvettes, and Free Escort Carriers can now use Reserve Movement.
* Updated 6.8.6.4 - Size-3 auxiliary cruisers can now be part of Battle Groups.

Relevant Explanations:
* Adding the Omega sector races is really causing several things in the rules to change. Mostly stemming from the fact that they aren't as fleshed out as the Alpha sector races. I've been adding rules here and there to let them use decent, general replacements for things like police ships and local defense ships. Too bad there are no general replacements for fast ships, cause races without these are going to have a hard time performing Raids.

* I've gone over the XP-refit rules and I'm satisfied that they aren't terrible and it also gives races with no other X-tech (ie. Omega races), access to most of the X-ship advantages.

* I also added the rule for giving ships early refits. This is not just a convenience thing for lazy players (although it will be that as well), it also provides players with better options as you get close to when a new technology is coming, especially speed-32 drones and plasma sabots.

[ikefist]

As to the raiding problem just alow ships with enginers to be able to raid and that would solve the problem

[cheethorne]

Aug 17, 2009 10:51:01 GMT -4 ikefist said:

As to the raiding problem just alow ships with enginers to be able to raid and that would solve the problem

Ha! Brilliant. I don't even need to do anything about that as the rules already state that a non-fast ship with a legendary engineer is a fast ship. That's great!

[ikefist]

Are the ryn aux ships going to have armour as well it would be easyto figure out just figure out the averageish sheild in the front and sides of your average cruiser then see how much armour the ryn ship has in the front take away the number of box in the armour = to the number of box your average ca has in the front and whats left is what it got from the sides i will describe it better in person but it could be done with just abit of math

[cheethorne]

No, the Ryn auxiliary ships (and civilian ships) will have shields like all other races, just like they have warp drives like all other races.

The same will be true for all races that can build such units (like the Branthodon - space dragon race). The andromedans cannot build such units, so it won't be an issue for them.